A walk on the green side

"Hope springs eternal" goes the saying, which, by its own definition, can never be proved, or disproved either, for that matter. But it is evident that hope springs perennially, and this (along with the beginning of baseball season) is the time of year when it does so. It is eminently reasonable, then, for our first issue of 2008 to carry the feature "High Hopes."

The story was conceived and assembled by executive editor Marc Eisen and consists of the ruminations of a variety of Madisonians, well known and otherwise. Many of the aspirations can be organized into broad categories, such as social justice or global peace or going green. And in the latter case we can help.

Besides the elections and the Olympics, 2008 will feature the first Isthmus Green Day. There is a growing realization that effecting change in the area of the environment will require more than discussion; some practical steps will have to be taken and more than a few behaviors changed. (That's why one of our respondents in "High Hopes" is actually hoping for $11-a-gallon gasoline. That would definitely prompt some changed habits.)

Isthmus Green Day, scheduled for April 26 at Monona Terrace, is intended to gather exhibitors with lots of ideas about how to walk your walk on the green side. Our two major sponsors so far, Madison Gas and Electric and Toyota, are corporations whose fates are inextricably linked with the energy future and which have shown resoluteness to face up to the changes that are coming.

You can follow our plans for Green Day through our website, TheDailyPage.com. Clicking on the "Get Green" tile will take you to the green page, where we are aggregating Isthmus stories on relevant topics. It also links to our Green Day plans. We will be updating that information as we move closer to Green Day.

Another reason to visit TDP is to finish the "High Hopes" article. We had more material than we could fit in the paper, so the rest of it went online, including contributions from Michael Feldman and Dick Wagner, two of our more prominent fellow citizens. As for my hopes for 2008, they are pretty simple. They are that peace and prosperity become realistic aspirations for every citizen of the planet and that the citizens of my country realize that we will never really be secure until this becomes the case.